


the great compromise

by agent_orange



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Pre-Slash If You Squint, this is sad and i'm sorry i'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_orange/pseuds/agent_orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is this it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the great compromise

Mark is successful. He has Facebook and Dustin and Chris, and he has loyal employees who aren't as smart as him, but are good enough, and they're loyal. And he has a family that loves him, even though he doesn't go back to New York much.

He's never been very good at reading people, but he knows people in the computer programming world are scared of him—wary, at the very least. Mark is so young and so intelligent; Chris tells him that his contacts who are social networkers never know what Mark will do next. He's unpredictable, and people like what they know, what they can identify and put into boxes and be sure about.

What matters is that he's made a name for himself. He's known, and it's just splitting hairs if people think of his weirdness instead of his brilliance when his name comes up in conversation. It's not like he doesn't know he's odd, not like he denies it. It's part of why there's Facebook.

It's also why he's not happy. Mark will never want for anything; he could retire today and not worry about money until the day he died. Living modestly isn't something he does because he wants to blow it all on strippers and coke and a yacht when he gets old enough to have a midlife crisis. Money just isn't very important to him. All money can do is buy things, and everything that's important to Mark, he creates himself. Code is important; Facebook is important. He really only needs the bare essentials: someplace to live/sleep; enough food so Chris, assistant, and his mother don't worry about him; a car; and a computer.

Computers are expendable.

Mark knows this firsthand. Eduardo can smash all the computers in the world and Mark could probably build himself a new one.

(Still, he backs up his new work on two hard drives and online storage site—with everything important, encrypted, of course.)

Mark could buy a replacement of almost anything he wanted, or have one made specially. He hasn't even turned thirty yet, and he has more than he ever could have dreamed of.

But he isn't happy. Not because his group of friends is small, or because he spends almost all of his time either at work or working from home. Rarely does Mark feel actively unhappy or lonely, but for years, he's had this lingering sense that something's not right, something's missing. Lately, though, it's become more present, like a shirt tag is itching his skin whenever he moves.

This is something Mark hides from everyone. Chris would try to set Mark up with a hundred people, because Chris is a genuinely nice person who wants everyone to be happy, even if he has to fix them to make that happen. Dustin would laugh at first, but then he'd start "dropping by" Mark's office more often, forcing him home earlier under the guise of wanting to use Mark's gaming system.

He might even—oh, God—start dragging Mark to bars or clubs or wherever single people meet other people so they can not be single together.

Anyway, it's not hard to do. Mark's always been a pretty private person. He doesn't need everyone in his business, so he makes sure to keep them out. Once feelings get involved, nothing good can happen. Luckily, he learned that early enough; he won't make that mistake again now. Allowing Sean to stay with the company as long as he did was Mark's last bad decision.

So Mark functions like he needs to and eats and breathes and lives. He can't say it's what he imagined when he explained the idea to Eduardo outside of that AEPi party, but he's not miserable, either.

_Is this it?_ is his biggest question. Mark's built himself up from nothing, yet still doesn't feel complete.


End file.
